Posts Tagged ‘Congress/DOD’

An effort by Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski to move the fiscal 2015 military construction-veterans affairs spending bill to the floor without allowing for amendments was rejected, but the Maryland Democrat says she hasn’t yet given up. Senate Republicans wanted the measure considered with amendments and to set aside the supplemental spending bill needed to address the child migration crisis, demands Mikulski could not agree to …

House and Senate staff from the Armed Services committees will attempt to work out a compromise fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill as a backup measure in the event the Senate once again fails to approve its own version of the annual defense policy legislation. The chairmen of both Armed Services committees recently met to discuss the need to hash out a conference report for the authorization bill that could quickly pass the House and Senate …

Elana Broitman, who heads the Pentagon’s industrial policy office, said Friday she is stepping down next month after only five months in her current post. Broitman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense (DASD) for manufacturing and industrial base policy, told her office that she would be moving to New York because of a change in her husband’s job, reported Defense News. She joined the Pentagon in 2013 as principal deputy to the DASD. When her predecessor Brett Lambert left last summer, Broitman replaced him in an acting capacity. In March she was officially named to her current post. Broitman will leave DOD at the end of August. “The department will ensure that the work of [the office] will continue through this transition,” spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told Defense News.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has authorized the military to house up to 5,000 additional unaccompanied children who have crossed the nation’s southern border illegally, spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Wednesday. Hagel’s order — signed at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — also extends the housing assistance mission to Jan. 31, 2015, reported Stars and Stripes. Officials have not yet chosen the installations that will accommodate the flood of children from Central America …

Language in the House version of the fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill shifting control of hundreds of thousands of acres owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the northern extension of White Sands Missile Range, N.M., to the Pentagon has ranchers concerned that the transfer could restrict their access for grazing and hunting. The provision is a reaction to the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project — a 515-mile, high-voltage transmission line traversing the northern extension of White Sands — which DOD officials had opposed until May when the developer agreed to bury five miles of the line to eliminate conflicts with training and weapons testing …

At a summit on maintaining military readiness under spending constraints, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee, reiterated his position that Congress shouldn’t consider approving a new round of base closures until the Pentagon clarifies the future direction of force structure and its objectives for the next BRAC. “And if we’re going to get this right, we need to finish some things, we need to understand where’s end strength going to end up, how are we going to properly resource in the face of sequester, in the face of transitioning out of [the overseas contingency operations account] …

House leaders are considering voting on a fiscal 2015 continuing resolution (CR) next week that likely would extend past the November elections and possibly into December. No details on the duration or spending levels are available as Republican leaders have yet to make a final decision, reported CQ. While lawmakers already have conceded that a CR would be needed to keep the federal government running when the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1, a decision by the House to move a stopgap funding measure prior to the August recess would come much earlier than anticipated. Such an action also would definitely mark the end of activity on individual appropriations bills, and would leave the task of crafting an omnibus spending bill that would fund the federal government for the rest of FY 2015 until a lame-duck session.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of Armed Service Committee, has given staff members permission to begin discussions with their House colleagues over a compromise version of the fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill in the event the Senate again fails to approve its own version of the annual defense policy legislation. “I have given the green light to have preliminary discussions,” Levin said, reported Defense News. “We’ve got to have a fallback plan …

Congress almost certainly will resort to a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the federal government running starting Oct. 1 as the Senate is unlikely to take up any of the fiscal 2015 spending bills that have been approved by the Appropriations Committee, including the defense and military construction-veterans affairs measures. The Senate has not debated any spending bills this year, a record of total gridlock that can be attributed to a failure of the chamber’s Democratic and Republican leaders to allow virtually any legislation to advance …